Miners General Guide
Roles Miners have three roles: Sapper (Marine), Engineer (SCV), and Mechanic (Civilian). Each of these roles have strengths and weaknesses so all roles must supplement each other. For this reason, it is HIGHLY encouraged to have variety within your team. Sapper (Marine) The Sapper's primary job is to act as a mobile defense for the team. It does this by upgrading Sapper's gun at the Engineering Bay, creating units at the Engineering Bay, creating bunkers, and placing minelayers. The sapper's uses explosive charges to mine rocks for income. It can also hire miners from barracks. The Sapper is the only role that cannot repair buildings so if a building is burning, a Sapper should ask their teammates for repair. Engineer (SCV) The Engineer's primary job is to act as a static defense for the team. It does this by creating turrets where defenses are needed and barricades to protect those turrets or prevent lava from spreading. The engineer can dig rocks, use mules to dig, or create refinery for money. Mechanic (Civilian) The Mechanic's primary job is to dig rocks fast and to build tanks. The mechanic is the fastest digger in the game once he gets enough drilling machines and drill upgrades. The tanks are especially important because it is the only unit with range to safely hit the overmind without being hit by the sunken colonies. Goal of Miners The goal is to kill the Overmind located at the bottom right of the map. The Overmind is protected by 2 unkillable sunken colonies and spawns Symbiote Traps. Zerg Units also spawn at the Overmind. Try to kill the overmind as quickly as possible as Zerg gets stronger as the game goes on. Earthquake During an Earthquake, much more Zerg units spawn. All Zerg units benefit from additional attack speed boost as well. For this reason, it is recommended to NOT attack the Overmind during an Earthquake Props will also be handy as more rockfalls occur during an Earthquake. Lava Lava appears when a player breaks a rock with the name "Congealed Lava". When this rock is destroyed, it will spawn lava on it. Lava spreads slowly to adjacent blocks that do not have rocks. Lava damages any unit on it, other than rocks and barricades. Releasing lava gives more of an advantage to Zerg players than miners. For this reason, it is HIGHLY discouraged for miners to destroy the "Congealed Lava" rock. Stopping Lava Lava can be stopped in two ways: Rocks and Barricades. Barricades can only be created by Engineers (SCV). Lava can also be destroyed by rocks falling on top of it. If lava is spreading out of control, then buy Seismic Explosives from any Engineering Bay and spam them on top of lava. Alternatively, have an SCV build barricades to block the lava. Skills and Experience Miners gain experience mining rocks and killing zerg units. The vast majority of experience the miner get will be from mining rocks. All the experience gained is shared and divided amongst miners so its very important that all miners keep mining so the team doesn't suffer from a lack of XP. As miners level up, they can put points into skills. There are three skills: Weapons, Protection, and Engineering. Weapons increases your hero's damage and attack speed, Protection increases your maximum health, health regen and armor, and Engineering upgrades your energy and energy regen. More importantly, skills are needed to build or upgrade buildings and items. Some of the skill requirements to upgrade items can be counter intuitive. For example, in order to upgrade sapper's gun, they need points into "Engineering" instead of "Weapons. Reviving Unlike Zerg players, Miners do not revive on their own. For a miner to revive, an ally must use a "Reanimator" near where the player died. Everyone starts with a "Reanimator" Items and Upgrading All miners have equipment slots for items to enhance their heroes. This can be accessed using N6 on the numpad. To obtain items, miners must build an Engineering Bay. However, some of items sold in the Engineering bay is dependent on the role of the miner who built it. Sappers' Engineering Bay sell Offensive Items, Engineers' Engineering Bay sells Utility Items, and Mechanics' Engineering Bay sells Armor Items. For mechanics, they can upgrade their machines from items from the service station (Factory). To upgrade items, you first buy the item and equip it onto your miner. After, you must open the equipment slot, which is opened by pressing N6, and LEFT CLICK the item while near an Engineering Bay Upgrading items do have skill requirements depending on the item. This can be bypassed by your teammates upgrading your items for you, if you do not have the sufficient skill requirements. The same is true for mechanic's machines except to upgrade machine related items, the item holder must be near a Service Station. Consumable items such as Seismic Explosive, Light Flare, Shock Grenade, or Reanimator can be bought in Engineering Bays as well. Consumable items can be used with the Numpad. All items are dropped upon death, so don't forget to pick them up when revived! The Charged Crystal and Cave Mushroom The Charged Crystals greatly increases your energy regeneration at the cost of some health and movement speed. It is highly encouraged for all Sappers and Engineers to use it to mine faster. Cave Mushrooms greatly increases your health regeneration at the cost of energy regeneration. Nuke At the start of the game, a nuke is dropped at spawn. This nuke, when used on the Overmind, will drop its' health to 1/2 HP. The downside of the nuke is that it will reveal the location of the nuke holder to the zerg players.